What it is: Lala is a newish (about a year old) web-based music marketplace, but to brand it as simply that does an extreme disservice to an interesting, innovative Internet destination that, given enough publicity, strong management and bit of good fortune could become the first online music store to give iTunes a real run for its money as a music distributor.

Why it’s cool: When I was a kid growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, I spent uncounted hours in the music listening rooms at the back of Pop Tunes on Summer Avenue, where I discovered the heritage of the city they call the Home of the Blues, and learned about the ground-breaking artists who gave birth to the Blues’ baby, Rock & Roll.

Pop Tunes was a great spot to get in out of the hot summer sun or the cold winter rain, where I could browse the racks, amassing a stack of LPs and 45s, both old and new, and head for one of the four or five sound-proof listening rooms at the back of the store, where I’d listen to my heart’s content before deciding which of the albums or singles my meager allowance or paper route money would buy me any given week.

By the time I left home for college in another of the great music cities in the US – New Orleans – I had a music collection numbering over 1000 lp records and another few hundred 45rpm singles.

What does my ancient music-buying experience have to do with Lala and this review?

Apple is advertising a rare job in its storied design department — and it’s a cool one.

Apple is looking for a computer modeling expert to make 3D renderings of concept products.

“CAD sculptor/digital 3D modeler needed to create high quality CAD models used in the industrial design and development of new products,” says the job posting on the Dezeenjobs website.

Headed by Jonny Ive, Apple’s design department is one of the most famous industrial design groups in the world. Employing about a dozen world-class designers, the studio is responsible for a string of trendsetting products, starting with the original iMac (which launched an industry see-through electronics) to the iPod and it’s iconic white earbuds.

Whoever gets the job will be one of the first people in the world to get a peek at whatever Apple is working on. Only CEO Steve Jobs and a handful of top executives get to see products in development.

The vast majority of Apple employees don’t see a final product until the day it is launched, even if they helped build it. Software programmers never see the actual hardware, and hardware engineers work on bulky prototypes housed in big polypropylene boxes.

Only the design department gets to see the final shape of the new product, and the studio is ultra-secretive. Housed in a nondescript building off Apple’s main campus, entry is limited to a chosen few. Even Apple’s previous CEO, John Sculley, was denied entrance. His electronic badge wouldn’t let him (he threw a fit).

The job sounds cool, but the job posting warns it is not a design job, nor a stepping-stone to a design job. Too bad.

The full job posting after the jump:

Congratulations are in order to the winners announced Tuesday among the more than 2500 entrants to Fuze Meeting‘s recent “Tell a Story” contest for designers and other creative users of Fuze and the web-based presentation sharing site Slide Share.

The $5,000 Grand Prize went to SlideShare user “slides2407” for the presentation “Drunkenomics – The Story of Bar Stool Economics”, while four additional category winners, including the makers of “Super Cool Dudes” (embedded above), who won for Best Design, collected iPhones and $100 iTunes Gift Cards.

SlideShare supports Keynote, PowerPoint, OpenOffice and PDF presentation formats and is one of the fastest-growing communities of presentation-sharing ideas on the web.

The contest was judged by a panel of business and technology luminaries including

• ♦ Don Tapscott – author or co-author of 13 widely read books, including Wikinomics, the best selling management book in the United States in 2007;
• ♦ Pete Cashmore – CEO of Mashable and a Top 25 Forbes Web Celeb in 2007;
• ♦ Tony Hsieh – CEO of Zappos, an online show retailer with merchandise sales over $1 billion in 2008 by focusing relentlessly on customer service;
• ♦ Ann Handley – chief content officer of MarketingProfs and the MarketingProfs Daily Fix; and
• ♦ Om Malik – journalist with over 15 years experience covering technology and business; founder and senior writer of gigaom.com

If you’re looking for a “green” way to protect your new iPhone, felted cases appear the latest fad for eco-conscious Apple fans. The latest example: the Domo Kun iPhone case. The  felt case, designed for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPod Classic, is emblazoned with Domo Jun, the monster serving as a Japanese TV mascot.

The felt monster measures 4.7-inch  x 3.1-inch, but the Etsy artist announced Tuesday the hand-made item was sold-out, just a day after putting the iPhone/iPod holder on the site. A similar fate met another iPhone case, a felt version of an old-style rotary phone.

Remember when Lonnie told you about an easy, fool-proof way to turn on iPhone tethering in the US? Well, there’s a way, way easier method, and it’s much, much more foolproof.

Simply point Mobile Safari to https://help.benm.at, select your country, download the profile for your carrier, and install. The settings menu will add an Internet Tethering toggle in the Network section. Then just pair with your computer over Bluetooth or plug in via USB  and go. No restart required. It’s really that easy.

Performance has been rock-solid in my experience, both for tethering Mac and Windows machines. Performance is terrible on EDGE and very nice on 3G, with battery life not noticeably worse than just browsing on Safari. And maybe a little bitter once the display goes to sleep. But I’m not running BitTorrent through the thing, either.

AT&T should have a killer offering on their hands once this actually ships. It would also be nice if AT&T tweaks the interface so you can turn on tethering without pulling your phone out of your pocket. Honestly, the only complaint I have. Anyone tried it outside the US? Really seems like something that should fly under the radar so long as you’re not downloading the whole Internet over it…

And, it goes without saying, this is use at your own risk and Apple will laugh at you if you brick your phone.

(And yes, I know we’re late, but I never recommend running something risky on your hardware if I haven’t done it myself. This is as close to safe as it gets.)

Richard Lai via Engadget

Id Software has released Doom Resurrection for the iPhone and iPod touch. It’s the first official release for the iPhone/iPod touch in the storied Doom franchise, which is now 16 year’s old and still running strong.

The $9.99 game is an “all-new chapter in the Doom saga,” says ID Software.

The first-person-shooter is based on 2005’s Doom 3, not the seminal Doom Classic, which runs on just about every gadget known to man, including the original iPod (if it’s already hacked to run Linux).

Unlike previous versions of Doom, the gameplay is not free flow. The character moves along a pre-determined path, blasting zombies and demons and dodging oncomong projectiles. Aiming is controlled by the iPhone;s accelerometer and reportedly works well.

“We built a completely new play style for this game,” says ID Software’s CTO John Carmack. “We have no worries that we’re going to do something utterly not fun.”

Carmack says he plans to release his port of Doom Classic to the iPhone and iPod in coming weeks.

Link to Doom Resurrection on the iTunes App Store.

UPDATE: The headline and photograph in this article have been updated to correctly state the standard agreed to by the handset makers referenced in the story.

Major cell phone handset makers including Apple, Nokia and Research in Motion (RIM) have agreed to back a European Union initiative to support standard device chargers that will charge any phone through a micro-USB port, according to a Reuters report Monday.

The agreement among 10 companies controlling 90% of the cell phone market in Europe calls for phones compatible with standard charging devices to be available in Europe beginning next year, according to EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen, who said, “People will [no longer] have to throw away their charger whenever they buy a new phone.”

At its inception, the agreement applies only to data-enabled smartphones, perhaps the fastest growing segment of the mobile handset market, and will affect only devices produced for use in Europe.

Verheugen hailed the agreement as a boon for consumers as well as the environment and estimated it will help reduce tons of eWaste generated annually by consumers.

Significant unanswered questions remain: what took them so long, and where is the rest of the world in this deal? Do device manufacturers have to be cajoled by regulatory bodies continent by continent to adopt a standard that should have been in place at least a decade ago?

Steve Jobs is officially back at work after six-month’s medical leave, an Apple spokesperson just told Bloomberg reporter Connie Guglielmo in a phone interview.

“Steve is back to work,” said Apple spokesman Steve Dowling on Monday. “We are very glad to have him back.”

Jobs is working at Apple a few days a week and working from home the remainder of the time, Dowling added. Jobs reportedly returned to work last week, but Monday’s statement is Apple’s first official word.

Jobs took six month’s medical leave in January, promising to return by the end of June. Monday is June 29. During his absence, Jobs had a liver transplant in Memphis, TN.

LINK.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk51XP-KZMg

So you don’t really need a MacBook that morphs into an unmanned aerial vehicle to get your express letter delivered, but kudos to the folks who made this video showing that the French postal service might be capable of  movie-like transformer special effects.

Via The Register

iTunes is hosting a free month-long concert series — 31 nights, 62 bands — at  London’s  Roundhouse in July.
With that many acts, there’s bound to be something to tickle your eardrums, the line-up so far includes Oasis, Madeleine Peyroux, Kasabian, The Hoosiers and Franz Ferdinand.

Tickets for the third iTunes Live concert series are give-aways, only, drawn from a pool of friends of the free music fest on Facebook.  (And just like your real friends,  the organizers have will access to your profile information, photos and your friends’ info).

If you can’t make it to London, you can check out live broadcasts and video highlights, before the concert recordings are sold at 22 iTunes stores worldwide — again, if you become an Tunes EU fan on Facebook .

Via MacWorld

Is your iPhone about to die, and you’ve lost your cell phone charger? An Australian design student now has an answer: just get moving. The Viber Burst design concept will turn walking, jogging or any movement into a cell phone battery recharge in just two seconds.

“Viber Burst can be worn as a feature piece of contemporary jewelry on footwear, it can also be a key ring or kept in a handbag,” designer Josh Pell said. The device includes a variety of designs and colors that “enable the user to connect with the product on an emotive level,” the Swinburne University student told the Australian Design Awards.

Although no production date was announced, the Viber Burst can attach to your shoe, purse or be held in your hand. The device is weather resistant and built to withstand punishment: the components use a flexible circuit board. When a product does appear, look for it in recycled packaging, designer Pell said.

The iPhone Dev Team, the tireless hackers who provide software to jailbreak iPhones, know how to unlock the iPhone 3G S, but have decided to hold off releasing the software publicly pending Apple’s next move in the two year-old cat and mouse game between the company and the rogue user community.

“We can jailbreak the 3GS right now,” said a statement at the Dev-Team Blog, “but making our jailbreak public at this point … would in fact be detrimental to many more people than it would help. So we feel it’s best to keep our version of the jailbreak out of Apple’s sights for the time being.”

The crux of the problem seems to be a Dev Team concern that Apple will soon release an update to 3.0 software that will close the ultrasn0w exploit released last week that jailbreaks iPhone 3G running 3.0 software, and that many people who want to get an iPhone 3G S don’t have one yet.

“Once the [3G S] jailbreak is out, Apple will fix the iBoot-family bug we use to accomplish it,” the blog post explains. “[Apple] will simply stop signing the old iBoots and only sign the fixed ones. If you bought your phone after Apple has done this, there’s nothing you can do…the jailbreak isn’t going to work for you.”

For now the team has decided to work on 3.0 software issues such as push notification and will wait and see what Apple does next.

[The iPhone Blog]

EOS Wireless has taken the iPod dock – of which there must be hundreds on the market by now – and given it a twist that may appeal to many people who’ve had the desire but not the funds to install a multi-room music system to play music from one central station throughout a home or office space.

We went hands-on with the EOS Wireless Stereo and gave it a thorough listen over the past three weeks and have our considered opinion about this ingenious set-up for you after the jump.

After using the iPhone 3GS for a week, here’s five of my favorite, non-obvious tricks I’ve picked up.

A couple of weeks ago the Swedish site Dreamfeld.se posted a video showing the iPhone operating system running on a Mac Pro and a big multitouch screen.

The video was pretty impressive. It looked like the world’s biggest iPhone running on a 24-inch monitor. The video soon went viral on blogs, YouTube and Twitter. It’s been watched more than 300,000 times and is still being passed around.

But the whole thing is a fake; a viral video experiment to see how many hits could be generated.

How did they do it?

A Parisian iPhone owner was videoing friends in a backyard swimming pool when he accidentally dropped it in the water. Amazingly, the iPhone kept recording and was working fine when he fished it out.

“It still frickin’ works,” he says amazed into the still-recording camera. Watch the video of the entire episode below.

And it still works fine, says the owner. “Phone still working fine with no issues whatsoever,” he says in the comments to the video. “I’m probably the luckiest guy alive!!”

Although the iPhone 3GS is an exceptionally well-made piece of hardware, it is NOT waterproof. This iPhone had a rubbery condom cover on, which probably helped it survive the dip in the pool.

Phonesuit, makers of the excellent Mili PowerPack battery extender for iPhone and iPod Touch is set to leverage the video capability of iPhone 3G S and increasing interest in micro projectors with the Mili Pro, a new hand-held projector designed just for Apple mobile devices, coming in September 2009.

The Mili Pro is an iPhone / iPod compatible (all models), rechargeable, micro video projector with built-in speakers that will allow users to watch movies, video clips, podcasts and more in 640 x 480 resolution on screen surfaces up to 40 inches.

The projector will feature a variety of AV inputs, allowing users to feed AV directly through the standard dock connectors of iPhones and iPods, with two included RCA and VGA cables permitting connection directly to a laptop or PC, and to most standard AV equipment sources such as DVD players, VCR’s, etc. Users can switch between the various inputs at any time with the input source button.

The device will also ship with two removable. swappable battery packs providing up to 3 hours of uninterrupted projection power.

More hi-res pics after the jump

Apple has spoken on the issue of porno iPhone apps, and it’s, ‘No way Jose.’

An Apple spokesman says the company will not approve iPhone apps with “inappropriate” content, especially pornography, despite the iPhone 3.0 age restriction system.

The question of porno apps arose after Hottest Girls appeared on the iPhone app store — the first app to feature saucy photos of naked women. Promising “2200+ sexy bikini babes and lingerie models,” the app is decidedly softcore. (The app disappeared for a few hours on Thursday, apparently because Apple had pulled it, but the developer had removed Hottest Girls voluntarily because of the strain on the image servers.)

Thanks to age restrictions in the new iPhone 3.0 OS software, mature apps can be blocked from download from the App Store. Many observers expected the App Store to be flooded with pornographic apps, especially because mobile porn is turning into big business. Juniper Research estimates the mobile porn market to be worth $3.5 billion by 2010. Growth will come from streaming video and video chat. The biggest market will not be the U.S., but Western Europe, Juniper said.

But now Apple says categorically it will not approve porno apps now or in the future. In a statement received by Cult of Mac, spokesman Tom Neumayr said:

“Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography. The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed, and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content. This was a direct violation of the terms of the iPhone Developer Program. The application is no longer available on the App Store.”

According to local news reports, hundreds of people camped outside a discount store in San Marcos, California hoping to buy 8G iPod nanos for $0.99 cents.

Matt Roberts told TV station San Diego 6 he waited 26 hours to be the first of the lucky nine customers who got the device at a $148 discount as part of grand opening celebration for a 99¢ Only Store.

The eight guys behind him eyed each other  for stamina; if none dropped out after the overnight vigil, the rest of the folks in the parking lot got scooters, DVDs and computer mice for a buck.

If you’ve got the staying power and are short on cash, check out the openings of 99¢ Only Stores or follow their Twitter feed, they’ve been running the iPod scheme to celebrate new stores for months now.

Wonder if people would do that for a Zune…

Via San Diego 6

What it is: Diorama is the first stereoscopic 3D game for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Think the lovechild of Labyrinth and MC Escher.

Why it’s good: With standard red/cyan 3d glasses the depth illusion of the hologram is truly hard to believe and the application of Apple’s mobile OS accelerometer makes Diorama one of the coolest things we’ve seen on the platform.

The current version, which sells for 99¢, features Jaw-dropping holographic 3D graphics, Stereoscopic rendering at 30 frames per second, and super realistic 3d physics played across 9 challenging board environments.

Plus, if you don’t happen to have a pair of 3D glasses lying around, you can send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to

American Paper Optics
3080 Bartlett Corporate Drive
Bartlett, TN 38133

and they will send you some.

Even better, Diorama’s developers provide a link to instructions for DIY 3D glasses.

Where to get it: 99¢ at the iTunes App Store

This video doesn’t even come close to doing the actual game justice, but we provide it here because that’s just how we roll.

UPDATE: As predicted, seven of the Top 10 albums on iTunes are Michael Jackson’s. Checked at 8AM Friday morning.

Just hours after his untimely death, Michael Jackson’s albums are storming the charts on iTunes.

Jackson’s seminal album Thriller is currently the number one album on iTunes, while The Essential Michael Jackson is number two.

Several of his other albums are climbing the charts fast. At the time of writing (about 6.45 PST) Jackson has nine albums in the iTunes top 40:

Thriller (25th Anniversary, Zombie Cover) is #7; Off the Wall is #9; The Ultimate Collection is #12; Number Ones is #13; Bad is #22; Greatest Hits is #27; Dangerous is #29; and Thriller (25th Anniversary, Deluxe Edition) is #28.

Jackson is the best-selling solo artist of all time. He sold more than 750 million albums worldwide, and Thriller, produced by the genius Quincy Jones, sold an estimated 100 million copies worldwide.

I expect Apple to post a homepage tribute, and Jackson’s albums to dominate the chart by the morning.

Mike Giepert discovered a novel use for the icons in his dock — spelling out words like “sex,” “props” and “agoraphobe!”

He asked the readers of his blog to submit their own. See some of the results after the jump. Much more here.

Via SwissMiss.

The King of Pop died in Los Angeles on Thursday afternoon. He was 50-years-old. He’d been staying in Bel-Air while working on his comeback, including 50 sold-out shows in London. CoM pays tribute to one of the greatest popstars ever: rest in peace Michael.

Michael Jackson on iTunes.

UPDATE 2: The app is available again from the App Store. Just checked at 4PM 6/25/09.

UPDATE: Apple hasn’t removed the app, the developer has, thanks to the strain on the saucy images server. “The server usage is extremely high because of the popularity of this app,” says the developer. “Thus, by not distributing the app, we can prevent our servers from crashing.” The app still works for those who have already bought it,  the developer says.

The first iPhone porn app has been removed from the iPhone App Store.

The softcore app, Hottest Girls, was downloadable for a few hours on Thursday, but is now unavailable. Neither Apple nor the developer were immediately available to provide an explanation, but it appears Apple changed its mind after the app received so much press attention on Thursday.

The $1.99 app for the iPhone and iPod touch featured 2,000 images of “topless, sexy babes and nude models,” according to reports.

Wired.com’s Charlie Sorrell, who downloaded the app before it was removed, said it was “terrible.”

“There is no slideshow to display a progressive striptease of the same model, so you are limited to one picture at a time before you have to navigate back to the main screen, which shows a lack of understanding as to how a porn app should work,” he wrote.

The brief approval of the app had many wondering if Apple was now willing to approve adult content on the App Store. The iPhone 3.0 OS includes age restrictions on applications.

Not saying I’d proudly adorn myself with it in public, but on days like today when that spinning beach ball of death has threatened to freeze the faithful MacBook several times, I’d kind of like to have it nearby to recover something like a sense of humor.

Made by a “guy in his mid-twenties born, raised, and terrified of economic collapse in West Michigan” who also has a cute Mac addict button, both cost $1.00 on Etsy.